Memeorandum

June 12, 2015

The authors, who have successfully rebutted an earlier NFL investigation, think the DeflateGate investigation was too flawed to conclude with reasonable confidence that the Patriots cheated. For example:

The Wells report’s main finding is that the Patriots balls declined in pressure more than the Colts balls did in the first half of their game, and that the decline is highly statistically significant. For the sake of argument, let’s grant this finding for now. Even still, it alone does not prove misconduct. There are, after all, two possibilities. The first is that the Patriots balls declined too much. The second — overlooked by the Wells report — is that the Colts balls declined too little.

The latter possibility appears to be more likely.

Apparently the Colts' balls were measured later during half-time, so they had more of a chance to warm to room temperature. Also, the refs were used two different gauges to initially inflate the balls before the game and then to re-check them at half-time. The gauges don't quite agree, so...

For example, there is considerable uncertainty concerning the actual pressure of the footballs. The N.F.L. official who checked the pressure before the game used some combination of two pressure gauges to measure the Patriots and Colts balls, but it is not known which particular combination.

One of the gauges, as the report notes, records pressures that are higher than the other. If the official used that gauge to measure the Patriots balls (but not the Colts balls) pregame, then those balls may well have started out with too little air, which could explain a later appearance of intentional deflation. The report, however, does not consider that possibility.

None of which proves the Patriots are as pure as the driven snow, but it creates what may seem like reasonable doubt. Or at least, give the Commissioner an excuse to cut Brady's penalty.

June 11, 2015

Obama is sending even more troops back to Iraq, and he may send more after that. Between this and the impending trade debacle, progressives must be wondering (not for the first time!) whatever happened to that nice anti-war chap they gushed for in 2008.

As to this new strategy, or whatever it is, the "lily pad" concept of multiple US bases is not the same as the "oil spot" strategy of focusing on civilian security in specific areas, with the goal of expanding those areas over time. Metaphorically, lily pads don't tend to grow (much), unlike spreading oil spots.

That said, no marketing maven would use an "oil-spot" label on a strategy for salvaging Iraq unless waving red flags at the "no blood for oil" crowd was part of the sales pitch. Stay with "ink spot".

Of course, if the strategy is to start in one place and expand over time, the White House could label this program "Operation Breaking Wind". Just trying to help...

On Tuesday there was a bit of a scare at the White House, but have no fear, the Secret Service was on the job. Wait. What?

On Tuesday, the White House briefing room was cleared in the middle of a press conference due to a bomb threat. The risk was managed by the Secret Service, despite many of the agents not having received national security clearance.

A Secret Service official told the Washington Post that four to five dozen officers lacked security clearances as of last week. A little more than two dozen of those were posted at the White House, the official said.

The Secret Service has been more than a little dysfunctional under President Obama, what with hookers and cocaine and people jumping the fence at the White House - and making it inside. You know, little stuff like that.

Here's a question - why is there such a backlog of agents without security clearances? The Free Beacon article takes us to the Secret Service itself for an answer:

Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said Tuesday that Clancy has put additional administrative staff to work on the backlog and that all outstanding clearances will be issued by Friday.

The Secret Service has rushed to increase its security force since September, when a man hopped the fence guarding the White House lawn and broke into the first floor wielding a knife.

Security threats have increased since, pushing the Secret Service to speed up the placement process, including stationing officers in high security positions without the proper clearance.

So the problem seems to be that since the Secret Service was pretty lousy at its job, it needed to hire more agents because, having been lousy at its job, the threats have increased, leading to the problem of hiring and deploying agents who aren't even fully vetted which - and stay with me here - just might lead to further deterioration in the performance of the Secret Service.

I'm going to guess how this ends: the Secret Service will ask for more funding. There's no problem any federal government agency can't (claim to) solve if it is just given more money.

The Secret Service has put a senior supervisor on leave and suspended his security clearance after a female employee accused him of assaulting her after-hours at agency headquarters last week, the agency said Wednesday.

The D.C. police’s sex-crimes unit and a government inspector general are investigating the female agent’s allegation that Xavier Morales, a manager in the security clearance division, made unwanted sexual advances and grabbed her on the night of March 31 after they returned to the office from a party at a downtown restaurant, according to two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the probe.

So a scandal actually reached the security clearance division within the agency, and later the agency has trouble processing security clearances. Hey, I wonder if the two are related?

And in the "just might lead to further deterioration in the performance of the Secret Service" department, a Secret Service agent was just busted for hitting up a girl at a Michelle Obama speech and later using his cell phone in a not entirely appropriate manner:

A junior Secret Service agent is under fire after he reportedly exchanged numbers with a woman at an event co-hosted by Michelle Obama and later sent her lewd text messages.

The unnamed agent was at an event celebrating veteran caregivers held by former Senator Elizabeth Dole's non-profit when he hit on the 'prominent Washington, DC staffer,' reports the National Enquirer.

The young woman later received lewd texts offering her oral sex followed by photos of the agent in which he flashed his penis while still in the Secret Service uniform.

A "junior agent"? Hmm, I'm guessing he couldn't flash her his security clearance.

Well. The nation can empathize with President Obama to the extent he feels like those charged to protect him are a mix of corrupt and incompetent. Believe me, for going on six plus years now we can empathize with just that feeling.

June 10, 2015

WASHINGTON — As NATO faces a resurgent Russian military, a substantial number of Europeans do not believe that their own countries should rush to defend an ally against attack, according to a comprehensive survey to be made public on Wednesday.

NATO’s charter states that an attack against one member should be considered an attack against all, but the survey points to the challenges the alliance faces in trying to maintain its cohesion in the face of an increasingly aggressive Russia.

“At least half of Germans, French and Italians say their country should not use military force to defend a NATO ally if attacked by Russia,” the Pew Research Center said it found in its survey, which is based on interviews in 10 nations.

The French army mutinied in 1917, rolled over in 1940, and has not really answered the bell since then. As to the Germans, there is a backstory:

Germany, a critical American ally in the effort to forge a Ukraine peace settlement, was at the other end of the spectrum. Only 38 percent of Germans said that Russia was a danger to neighboring countries aside from Ukraine, and only 29 percent blamed Russia for the violence in Ukraine.

Consequently, 58 percent of Germans do not believe that their country should use force to defend another NATO ally. Just 19 percent of Germans say NATO weapons should be sent to the Ukrainian government to help it better contend with Russian and separatist attacks.

Support for the NATO alliance in Germany was tallied at 55 percent, down from 73 percent in 2009. Those results are influenced by Germans in the eastern part of the country, who are more than twice as likely as western Germans to have confidence in President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

And NATO really only needs a few patsies:

In the United States, the study notes, support for NATO remains fairly strong. Americans and Canadians, it says, were the only nationalities surveyed in which more than half of those polled believed that their country should take military action if Russia attacked a NATO ally.

June 06, 2015

I would like to highlight the Veterans History Project page devoted to D-Day, which includes interviews from soldiers who survived the Invasion of Normandy.

Allow me to give quick summary of one of these heroes.

Charles C. Woodring was drafted a year after he graduated high school. His basic training was cut short by two weeks in order for him to be deployed to England. On D-Day his job was to go in ahead of the troops to clear the barbed wire fencing along the beach. In the course of talking about his boat hit a mine on D-Day and having to swim several hundred yards to shore, Mr. Woodring describes having to inflate his life belt saying, "We didn't have Mae West." Later in the interview he says he will never, ever drive a Chrysler because the Germans tried to kill him. Mr. Woodring is a Silver Star recipient.

June 05, 2015

I suppose I can take credit - like 99.9% of the rest of the world - in claiming the IRS wasn't going to come a calling when it came to looking into the Clinton Foundation's tax exempt status. But when I did so, I made this crack:

That link goes to video of Hillary working a rope line by telling someone in line to go to the back of the line.

Well. Instead of Hillary treating the IRS that way - it appears it is the IRS treating members of Congress in this very fashion.

A House Republican called out the IRS on Thursday for sending her a form letter in response to concerns about the Clinton Foundation's tax exemption.

The IRS's response to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) was addressed to "Sir or Madam," and the senior agency official who runs the tax-exempt division didn't sign it.

Yeah, yeah, the impersonal nature of addressing a Congresswoman in this manner is troubling. But more importantly, it is appalling in this day and age that even form letters can be so triggeringly microaggressive. How did the IRS know that the recipient of the letter would identify as a sir or a madam, and not one of the other 57 varieties of genderish identification?

The IRS got lucky that Ms. Blackburn was only outraged by the lack of urgency and by the agency on the matter at hand and the lack of "tact" in perfunctory nature of the letter, otherwise there might have been hell to pay. But this is Barack Obama's America where Congress is just an afterthought, so they will be relatively safe with their response. From the IRS letter:

The Internal Revenue Service has an ongoing examination program to ensure that exempt organizations comply with the applicable provisions of the Intern Revenue Code. The information you submitted will be considered in this program.

So, yeah, the IRS isn't interested in examining the Clinton Foundation. Back of the line for you, Ms. Blackburn! The sun also rose in the East this morning, and I can confirm that when I brushed my teeth earlier that the water was still wet.

The most we can hope for here is that someone at the IRS goes to sensitivity training.

This is probably not as well-known or oft talked about as it should be: during the period in which Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, at no time was a permanent, Senate-confirmed Inspector General in place.

Away we go again.

In her testimony at today's Senate hearing (.pdf), Danielle Brian from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) recounted the situation with the State Department IG position during Obama's presidency. The position was vacant when he entered office after the former IG stepped down in the last year of Bush's presidency amid controversy.

Obama, however, was in no rush to fill that vacancy, despite concerns surrounding the acting IG. From Ms. Brian's testimony:

In 2010, POGO raised concerns about the relationship between [acting IG Howard] Geisel, a former ambassador and long-time member of the diplomatic corps, and State’s Under Secretary for Management, Patrick Kennedy. ... Despite Geisel’s assurances that his office’s work was not affected by his ties to an agency official, numerous whistleblowers from the State Department had come to POGO “due to a perception within the Department that employees with knowledge of wrongdoing cannot go to the OIG because they believe it to be captured by management.”

You know what they say - and by "they" I mean the Obama administration and by "say" I mean in hushed tones away from public consumption - Stifling Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism.

Continuing with Ms. Brian's testimony:

The Department lacked a permanent watchdog for Hillary Clinton’s entire four-year tenure as Secretary of State, the longest vacancy since the position was created in 1957.

Yes, Obama thrives on his presidency being called unprecedented.

The public is also left wondering whether an insider would have felt more comfortable blowing the whistle on the Department’s email problems if the IG’s office was headed by a permanent leader whose independence was beyond reproach.

We'll cut Obama at least a little slack here. Even had he appointed a permanent IG, it is safe to assume that person would have been more a political hack than an unrepoachable and independent leader. So let's just insert a cynical Hillarian "what difference would it have made" exclamation and MoveOn.

Once his Administration began, it took President Obama more than 1,700 days to nominate a permanent State IG—and only after Members of Congress, including this Committee, pressured the White House to act. The vacancy at the IG’s office lasted a total of 2,071 days— more than five years—before the President’s nominee, Steve A. Linick, finally took office in September 2013.

Soooooo, can we can reasonably assume that now Secretary of State John Kerry's email address ends in .gov? It's the small things that keep us going.

Ms. Bryan also referenced this Wall Street Journal piece from March, which noted that State was the only cabinet level department that had "neither a confirmed nor nominated head watchdog" during that time.

The lack of a confirmed inspector general raises questions about oversight of the department under Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton. The department has been criticized for its failure to gather and archive the email records of Mrs. Clinton and other officials and for responses to public-record requests that lawmakers and advocacy groups say were insufficient, including its response to requests for information from a congressional panel investigating the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Honestly, looked at another way, I think it answers as many questions as it raises, confirming Obama's unwillingness and weakness in providing independent oversight of the State Department on Hillary's watch.

Hillary got away with ethically troubling - and most likely outright illegal - behavior while Secretary of State when Obama was her boss (thanks, Obama).

Now just imagine what Hillary could get away with if she were elected President and effectively had no boss.

Well. You can rest assured that Hillary has spent her entire adult lifetime imagining that very thing.

June 03, 2015

Hillary 2015 continues its Eerie Reprise of Nixon 1968 - in each case the nation stared down a seemingly inevitable nominee who inspired the respect but not affection of supporters, the loathing of detractors, and was removed from and at odds with the media.

In screaming contrast to the rock star enthusiasm of Barack 2008, Getting Ready for Hillary seems to be as exciting to Democrats as getting ready for a trip to the dentist. They know they have to do it, they know they will do it eventually, but later will be fine.

Anyway, this sentence seems to reflect a bit of a self-awareness deficit on Ms. Walsh's part:

Media covering the media’s complaints about the way media is treated; what could be more Beltway-centric inside baseball?

Since she asked, let's give it a go. More Beltway-centric inside baseball is media person Joan Walsh covering the coverage of media's complaints about the way media is treated.

We not so eagerly await perhaps Howard Kurtz or Ron Fournier to cover the coverage of the coverage of the complaints. And maybe at some point, if we're really lucky, Glenn Klessler will then weigh in to tell us how much of it is fact versus mostly fact, and Dana Milbank will write an unintentionally funny piece on how all of this shows why Republicans are crazy and stupid.

Sheesh. Where will it all end? We're no longer dealing with inside baseball, we're peeling the baseball as if it were an onion. Or something. In any event, now my eyes are burning.

I don't care if the media truly does hate Hillary Clinton. It doesn't matter if they do or don't. If Hillary is the Democratic nominee in 2016, the media will fall in line.

June 02, 2015

The World Series of Poker began last week. The event has grown to gargantuan size - there were over 22,000 players in its "Colossus" tournament, and the entire event is being played over 51 days.

Shuffle up and deal!

In other news of high stakes gambling, the ongoing negotiations over Iran's nuclear program are ongoing. However, due to his bicycle accident, John Kerry has returned to Washington to nurse his broken femur.

The good news is, this will limit John Kerry's involvement in the negotiations at least to some extent. The bad news is, there really is no one in the Obama administration who would be much better.

The scary news is, what if Obama were to get more directly involved. Back in May, the New York Times wrote about the negotiations in terms of Obama's legacy:

“Right now, [Obama] has no foreign policy legacy,” said Cliff Kupchan, an Iran specialist who has been tracking the talks as chairman of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. “He’s got a list of foreign policy failures. A deal with Iran and the ensuing transformation of politics in the Middle East would provide one of the more robust foreign policy legacies of any recent presidencies. It’s kind of all in for Obama. He has nothing else. So for him, it’s all or nothing.”

WASHINGTON — With only one month left before a deadline to complete a nuclear deal with Iran, international inspectors have reported that Tehran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel increased about 20 percent over the last 18 months of negotiations, partially undercutting the Obama administration’s contention that the Iranian program had been “frozen” during that period.

The overall increase in Iran’s stockpile poses a major diplomatic and political challenge for President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who flew back to the United States from Geneva on Monday for treatment of a broken leg he suffered in a bicycling accident, as they enter a 30-day push to try to complete an agreement by the end of June. In essence, the administration will have to convince Congress and America’s allies that Iran will shrink its stockpile by 96 percent in a matter of months after a deal is signed, even while it continues to produce new material and has demonstrated little success in reducing its current stockpile.

How does the administration view this problem?

Administration officials said nothing publicly about the atomic energy agency’s report. But several officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the Iranians understood that under a final agreement they would commit to giving up almost all of their fuel and maintaining a small stockpile for 15 years.

“How are they going to do it?” one senior American official said recently when asked about the negotiations, details of which Mr. Kerry and his team are trying to keep confidential. “We’re not certain. It’s their problem, not ours. But it’s a problem.”

Nonetheless, officials say they expect the radical reduction of Iran’s stockpile to happen in the opening months of any agreement, either by shipping it out of the country or changing it into a form that would make it impossible to re-enrich and use as a weapon.

It's not our problem? I'd like someone in the administration to consider it our problem - rather than blithely assert that we expect the Iranians to do something that they've shown no interest in doing. Maybe we could even work toward becoming certain how the Iranians would reduce their stockpile, and - I'm mean I'm just spitballing here - devise a program through which we could verify that the reduction actually takes place.

I'd like to ask if that would be too much to ask, but I'm afraid an honest answer from the administration would be depressing.

Well, if one were to imagine Obama going toe to toe with Iran's lead negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif in a poker match - and pushing all in - I fear it might look something like this:

To paraphrase a favorite Instapundit line, the country's innot holding the very best of hands with this president and those in his administration in charge.

June 01, 2015

The [Clinton Foundation] disclosure says Mr. and Mrs. Clinton earned big speech fees, and the list shows Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton turning over between $12 million and $26 million. Anyone who has dealt with the IRS before might ask how it is possible for the Clintons to pick and choose which fees they hand over and which they keep, if that is indeed what is occurring.

The assignment of income doctrine has long been part of our tax law. In general, it prevents taxpayers from sending income to another person or entity. The tax law if full of examples of unsuccessful attempts to avoid income or assign claims. On the surface, it looks as though the Clintons are doing just that. For the Clintons, there may well be a legitimate way to structure their fees as they do. There is no question that they would not want to receive the speaking fees personally and then hand them over to the Foundation.

But a question of whether the Clintons have violated the law is entirely separate from "Will the IRS investigate possible violations?"

For our money, on the first question we'd suggest answering with a question with something about bears, woods and bowel movements. On the second question, "keeping hope alive is on life support" seems overly optimistic.

If the IRS looks into this–which seems unlikely–it might consider the cushy private travel and other perks that go with it. The IRS calls it private inurement when private parties–especially founders–get big salaries or other items that should be treated as income. As with the Clintons’ private email server, the line between personal benefit and the public purpose seems blurred. One thing though that is crystal clear is that Hillary Clinton is highly skilled with charities, transparency, and email.

May 31, 2015

Reading the newspaper this morning, I came across this article relating the story of Fritz Klemmer and Susie Lynch. The sordid tale crossed multiple states over a number of years, but the gruesome ending took place in our little town 30 years ago this Wednesday.

It turns out the story was subsequently turned into a book and even a 1994 made for tv movie starring Kelly McGillis and Harry Hamlin.

And for your viewing pleasure, I see the movie is on YouTube. It's in three parts, but I'll just link the first one.

May 30, 2015

Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ordered the racketeering, influenced and corrupt organizations, or RICO, case to head to trial January 20, 2016.

For those scoring at home, that's exactly one year to the day before Hillary will not be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.

This order by the judge doesn't necessarily mean there will be a trial beginning that day - there are plenty of legal maneuverings to be done between now and then. But the timing is, shall we say, politically inconvenient for Hillary:

While the Clinton legal team could settle the case or enter a variety of motions in an effort to derail the lawsuit before the trial, the judge's swift decision means the matter could go to court before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucus and Feb. 9 New Hampshire primary.

The lawsuit calls for the court to seize the Clinton email server, but that's not happening, at least not yet:

Klayman also asked the judge to order a "neutral forensic expert ... to take custody and control of the private email server and reconstruct and preserve the official U.S. Government records relating to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy during Defendant Secretary Clinton's term as Secretary of State."

Judge Middlebrooks has not yet ruled on Klayman's request that the court seize Hillary Clinton's server.

But let's go out on a limb and predict that there will never be an examination of the server and all its contents because the server and/or all its contents met with an untimely demise long before now. Or timely demise if your last name is Clinton.

The story comes from the Washington Examiner, and the Clinton Foundation was quick to respond in defending themselves. Just kidding.

The Clinton Foundation declined a request for comment Friday.

There is currently no evidence to support the rumor that Bill Clinton required a six figure donation to the foundation in order to provide a response.

May 29, 2015

"The Coach", former House Speaker turned high-priced lobbyist, is the target of a mysterious indictment. The Times has some details (and attaches the indictment) and the WaPo has some speculation that is informative for its omissions. [BREAKING UPDATES below]

Background from the Times:

CHICAGO — J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, has been charged with lying to the F.B.I. and making cash withdrawals from banks in a way that was designed to hide that he was paying $3.5 million to someone for his “misconduct” from years ago, a federal indictment released on Thursday said.

Mr. Hastert, 73, the longest-serving Republican speaker, had worked as a lobbyist since leaving office. The indictment, announced by the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said Mr. Hastert, who was once a high school teacher and wrestling coach in Yorkville, Ill., had so far paid $1.7 million to the person, who had lived in Yorkville and had known Mr. Hastert for most of his or her life. Mr. Hastert worked in Yorkville from 1965 to 1981.

In 2010, during meetings between Mr. Hastert and the unnamed individual, the two discussed “past misconduct” by Mr. Hastert against the person, according to the indictment.

In those meetings and in later discussions, Mr. Hastert agreed to provide money to the person “in order to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct,” the indictment said. It said he was structuring the cash withdrawals in increments designed to avoid bank reporting requirements. The indictment does not provide details of the misconduct.

So we don't even know if the misconduct was criminal. Let me toss out two possibilities. First, maybe this was an "I Know What We Did Last Summer" scenario, where Hastert and a high school buddy did something dreadful, leaving an unsolved crime in their dark past. Think "Kennedyesque DUI, with a hit-and-run victim". The obvious weakness of this scenario - where are the other indictments and the rest of the investigation? Does the other perpetrator get a pass? If there is a statute of limitations issue on the underlying act, isn't there a prosecutor clever enough to figure out how to indict a multi-year conspiracy to conceal that act?

Or, if there is an ongoing investigation into the other perp or perps and Hastert has become a cooperating witness, why was this indictment unsealed now? As we saw just yesterday with the FIFA indictments, various cooperating offenders had their pleas kept sealed for years.

Which takes me to the obvious scenario - Hastert is paying child support to the mother (or child) of an out-of-wedlock relationship from his youth. A possible clue - the indictment is quoted as saying, my emphasis, that Hastert was paying in order to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct...”. And why is this coming out now? Well, for years Hastert was a lowly-paid teacher, and then a (relatively) low-paid member of the House. But now? Back to the Times:

Since leaving office, Mr. Hastert has been a prominent lobbyist in Washington. He is co-leader of the Public Policy & Political Law Practice at the Washington law firm of Dickstein Shapiro, according to the firm’s website.

And he moonlights as the firm's bagman, paying off officials and staffers that the lobbyists are bribing? Please. Hastert is finally cashing in on his Washington connections, as is his acquaintance from his youth. And for all anyone knows, Hastert may have been paying this person a pittance out of his own somewhat larger pittance for years without attracting attention; this only caught the Feds attention when Hastert's paycheck spiked:

According to the federal indictment made public on Thursday, Mr. Hastert gave money to the unnamed person for four years, starting in 2010.

At first, Mr. Hastert provided $50,000 in cash from several bank accounts to the person every six weeks, for a total of 15 such exchanges, the indictment said.

Banks are required to report cash withdrawals of more than $10,000, and in April 2012, bank officials questioned Mr. Hastert about sizable withdrawals from his accounts.

That July, Mr. Hastert began making smaller withdrawals, of less than $10,000, and he continued providing them to the person at prearranged meeting places and times, the indictment said.

Later, the arrangements changed so that Mr. Hastert was providing $100,000 every three months, the indictment said.

Is that a lot of money to Hastert? I don't know. But he is no longer an elected official, so a conventional sex scandal wouldn't cost him his office. That suggests he might be paying out of a sense of obligation, rather than simply a desire to conceal this.

In any case, Hastert gets huge points off for this:

By 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service began investigating the withdrawals, focusing, federal authorities said, on whether cash was being taken out in a way that was intended to evade bank reporting requirements.

Last Dec. 8, Mr. Hastert was interviewed by federal agents. He told the agents that he was not paying anyone with the money, but was keeping the withdrawals for himself because he felt unsafe with the banking system.

“Yeah,” Mr. Hastert told the agents, according to the indictment. “I kept the cash. That’s what I’m doing.”

Don't lie to the FBI. My goodness, Hastert works at a law firm - get a damn lawyer. That way you don't create a crime while the Feds are investigating a non-crime. When Hastert makes his next court appearance, I want to see his attorney in the appropriate t-shirt.

So, my current guess - Hastert is guilty of trying to do the right thing by supporting an illicit child and then was a damn idiot who lied to the FBI about it. The rest is politicized, Chicagoland, Obamaland BS.

WHILE ON THE SUBJECT OF STUPID:

Possibly the dumbest passage in the NY Times is this:

This is not the first time a political figure has attracted attention through banking practices. Eliot Spitzer, then the governor of New York, came to the attention of federal investigators after bank officials noticed that he was moving around thousands of dollars in a manner they thought was intended to conceal the purpose and source of the money. As it turned out, Mr. Spitzer was using the money to pay for prostitutes. He resigned when the payments became public; he was not charged with a crime.

Hmm, Spitzer was a public official and former State Attorney General engaging in criminal activity he had prosecuted and denounced. By comparison, Hastert is... what? The Feds know but won't say. The Times doesn't know but is taking this indictment at face value.

The WaPo ruminates on blackmail, never notes the possible that Hastert is being a dutiful dad (maybe Hastert can come clean in a Father's Day interview with George Stephanopoulos, friend to adulterers?) and includes this absurdity:

Blackmail couldn’t really exist until the rise of capitalism and modern social mores. A king was always a king, whether or not he behaved badly, but a businessman or politician who lost his reputation could face ruin — as Josh Duggar is finding out.

“It was a crime that only emerged in the 19th century,” Angus McLaren, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Victoria and the author of “Sexual Blackmail: A Modern History,” told the New York Times in 2009 after David Letterman was blackmailed for his extramarital affairs. “If one was an aristocrat, say, you couldn’t lose your position because of trifling with the housemaids.”

Really? Wait'll they get a chance to watch the blackmailing in "Game of Thrones", which has a medieval feel to it. The Three Musketeers was set in the 17th century but blackmail of the Queen was a key plot point. And it was not just her position but her head that was at risk if the King discovered her infidelity. Or for Shakespeareans, "Richard III" is full of regal blackmail.

AND WHERE IS THE IRS IN THIS? How did Hastert give away that much money without getting caught in the gift tax/estate tax maze? Would any IRS action occur separately, or would it be part of this indictment? Over to the legal eagles...

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert paid a man to conceal a sexual relationship they had while the man was a student at the high school where Hastert taught, a federal law enforcement official told NBC News on Friday.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity. Tribune newspapers reported earlier in the day that two unnamed federal officials said that Hastert paid a man from his past to conceal sexual misconduct.

Just to nitpick, those stories don't necessarily support each other - paying "a man from his past to conceal sexual misconduct" might mean the man in question was his lovechild. The ChiTrib has an overly optimistic business model but the LA Times has seemingly similar coverage.

And do let me add, as my ship goes down - as Isaac Asimov explained in "The Gods Themselves", in nature "one" is rarely the right answer. If this was an abused student, why aren't there others, as with Jerry Sandusky of Penn State? Is the FBI really just moving on without resolving that? Or are they hoping the publicity will bring forward more victims? Oh, brother.

The man – who was not identified in court papers — told the F.B.I. that he had been inappropriately touched by Mr. Hastert when Mr. Hastert was a high school teacher and wrestling coach, the two people said on Friday. The people briefed on the investigation spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a federal investigation.

The F.B.I. declined to comment.

It was not clear when the alleged behavior occurred. But according to court documents, Mr. Hastert was a high school teacher and coach in Yorkville, Ill., from 1965 to 1981. The F.B.I. was not able to substantiate the allegations beyond the man’s statements.

Well, Hastert's payments seem to be substantiation. Although maybe they invented this as a cover for Hastert's real offense, because they figured that would bother people even more than pedophilia? I don't want to know...

Source: Investigators considered including a second alleged victim in the Hastert indictment, but ultimately chose not to do so.

A source familiar with the investigation told BuzzFeed News that U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon considered but did not pursue additional charges against former Speaker Dennis Hastert, which would have included a reference to an Individual B, one of potentially several alleged victims of “prior misdeeds.”

According to this source, no additional charges are expected to be filed against Hastert at this point.

For decades they have been blacklisted as foods to avoid, the cause of deadly thickening of the arteries, heart disease and strokes.

But the science which warned us off eating eggs – along with other high-cholesterol foods such as butter, shellfish, bacon and liver – could have been flawed, a key report in the US has found.

Foods high in cholesterol have been branded a danger to human health since the 1970s – a warning that has long divided the medical establishment.

A growing number of experts have been arguing there is no link between high cholesterol in food and dangerous levels of the fatty substance in the blood.

I admit, I have a rooting interest in this new direction because no matter how many experts tell me to do otherwise, no one is going to convince me to give up eggs, butter, shellfish or bacon. Liver is negotiable.

Now, in a move signalling a dramatic change of stance on the issue, the US government is to accept advice to drop cholesterol from its list of 'nutrients of concern'.

The US Department of Agriculture panel, which has been given the task of overhauling the guidelines every five years, has indicated it will bow to new research undermining the role dietary cholesterol plays in people's heart health.

Its Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee plans to no longer warn people to avoid eggs, shellfish and other cholesterol-laden foods.

Turning back to the idea that science is never as truly settled as many experts would like to claim, and that experts are not omniscient, let's take a quick peak at some other offerings in the health section from the Daily Mail:

Look, undoubtedly some of this is really good advice. I wouldn't dismiss any of it out of hand, nor would I encourage anyone to dismiss what health experts advise out of hand either. It is the unwavering assuredness of some of the advice - not just in the above, but generally as well - that tends to bristle. At times there is little to separate what "a study has found" and "one weird trick!".

There are people who spend a lot more time trying to understand how diets impact their lives than I do, including reading up on the latest studies and news. I hope that their efforts result not only in healthier living, but a better peace of mind in trying to live healthy. I praise them. I should probably be at least a little more like them.

But I also know that had I accepted the consensus of what experts said for decades on cholesterol I would have missed out on a lot of bacon and butter - and as it turns out, perhaps for no real health advantage.

The good news is - unless you are just mean and enjoy other people's humiliation - Marie Harf will no longer be behind a podium making a fool of herself in front of the nation and the world.

The bad news is - unless you are unpatriotic and enjoy the US being humiliated - Marie Harf will now be working in a position focused on leading the Iran negotiations communications strategy. Don't laugh, it's true.

“I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives. I heard a lot of–sort of a lot of big words and big thoughts in that piece, and certainly there is a place for that. But I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives about what they would do differently,”

May 25, 2015

And we owe them something, those boys. We owe them first a promise: That just as they did not forget their missing comrades, neither, ever, will we. And there are other promises. We must always remember that peace is a fragile thing that needs constant vigilance. We owe them a promise to look at the world with a steady gaze and, perhaps, a resigned toughness, knowing that we have adversaries in the world and challenges and the only way to meet them and maintain the peace is by staying strong.

That, of course, is the lesson of this century, a lesson learned in the Sudetenland, in Poland, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in Cambodia. If we really care about peace, we must stay strong. If we really care about peace, we must, through our strength, demonstrate our unwillingness to accept an ending of the peace. We must be strong enough to create peace where it does not exist and strong enough to protect it where it does. That's the lesson of this century and, I think, of this day. And that's all I wanted to say. The rest of my contribution is to leave this great place to its peace, a peace it has earned.

Thank all of you, and God bless you, and have a day full of memories.

President Obama, on the other hand, rejects "20th century thinking" and refuses to learn from the lessons it taught us. His contribution on this day will most likely involve some sort of selfie.

May 24, 2015

DUBLIN — Ireland became the first nation to approve same-sex marriageby a popular vote, sweeping aside the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church in a resounding victory Saturday for the gay rights movement and placing the country at the vanguard of social change.

With the final ballots counted, the vote was 62 percent in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, and 38 percent opposed.

And does this mean anything for the Supreme Court, which is presumably penning a decision on gay marriage due to be delivered in June?

My understanding of the Court process is that we are late in the game, the votes have been cast and the winners and dissenters (if any) are already drafting their opinions.

But set aside reality for a moment. If I were a Court liberal, I would insist that the Irish vote confirms the tide of history and demonstrates that The Time Is Now for the court to deliver a sweeping affirmation of gay rights.

Or if I were a conservative (more likely!) I would argue that the United States is still a democracy too, and maybe the court should issue a modest, limited decision which will give the vox populi some room to speak through the legislative process.

Most Americans have never tried the two best-selling beers in the world.

Indeed, I am not most Americans. Last fall I traveled to San Francisco and stayed in a hotel right next to the entrance to Chinatown. I walked up and down Grant Street looking for a place for dinner one evening. I settled on a place with this view:

I did not realize I was drinking the second most drunk beer in the world. It's the only beer on the list besides the American ones and Heineken that I've had. Anyone else had any of those?

Since this is a beer thread that has veered to that San Francisco trip - I also had the opportunity to meet up with some JOMers for dinner in Berkeley. Here's my Lagunitas Pale Ale at Skates on the Bay:

And here's my Anchor Steam at a little place on Fisherman's Wharf with my clam chowder:

To be sure, while I am an avid consumer of beer, I am by no means a connoisseur. In fact, I would just as happy drinking a Miller High Life - like I am right now out on my deck - than just about anything else.

Huh. If I've learned one thing today, it's that I take a lot of pictures of beer.

What is everyone else drinking (beer or otherwise)? What do you wish you were drinking?

May 22, 2015

Let's check in with Paul Krugman, a proud member of the alternative-reality based community:

One of the Obama administration’s underrated virtues is its intellectual honesty. Yes, Republicans see deception and sinister ulterior motives everywhere, but they’re just projecting. The truth is that, in the policy areas I follow, this White House has been remarkably clear and straightforward about what it’s doing and why.

To be fair, the Earnest Prof is doing a bit of preliminary bonding with his readers before joining them in Raising Question about the Trans-Pacific Partnership:

Every area, that is, except one: international trade and investment.

I don’t know why the president has chosen to make the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership such a policy priority. Still, there is an argument to be made for such a deal, and some reasonable, well-intentioned people are supporting the initiative.

But other reasonable, well-intentioned people have serious questions about what’s going on. And I would have expected a good-faith effort to answer those questions. Unfortunately, that’s not at all what has been happening. Instead, the selling of the 12-nation Pacific Rim pact has the feel of a snow job. Officials have evaded the main concerns about the content of a potential deal; they’ve belittled and dismissed the critics; and they’ve made blithe assurances that turn out not to be true.

I can help - the Administration behavior on trade is only surprising if you can somehow convince yourself that spinning and deceiving is not their default mode. The "Lie of the Year" on health care, Obama's other signature domestic policy achievement, might suggest to some that bending the truth in search of the Greater Good (understood within the White House to be Obama's Vision and Legacy) might be the sort of thing Team Obama would do.

May 20, 2015

Around the world, climate change increases the risk of instability and conflict. Rising seas are already swallowing low-lying lands, from Bangladesh to Pacific islands, forcing people from their homes. Caribbean islands and Central American coasts are vulnerable, as well. Globally, we could see a rise in climate change refugees. And I guarantee you the Coast Guard will have to respond. Elsewhere, more intense droughts will exacerbate shortages of water and food, increase competition for resources, and create the potential for mass migrations and new tensions. [...]

Around the world, climate change will mean more extreme storms. No single weather event can be blamed solely on climate change. But Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines gave us a possible glimpse of things to come -- one of the worst cyclones ever recorded; thousands killed, many more displaced, billions of dollars in damage, and a massive international relief effort that included the United States military and its Coast Guard. So more extreme storms will mean more humanitarian missions to deliver lifesaving help.

Indeed, what our Ummah is experiencing, of effects associated with the enormous climate changes and the great suffering the natural disasters are leaving behind that now become prevalent throughout the Muslim countries, renders the traditional relief efforts insufficient. [...]

Similarly, we are in need of making major efforts in our relief work, as those victimized by the current climate change is a very large number, expected to rise. According to the studies, this number is higher than the number of people victimized by wars, for which the states recruit their strongest men, offer their best training and slash major portions of their budgets. [...]

And owing to the high frequency of such disasters caused by climate changes, the effort must not become merely one of providing temporary assistance, rather, to set up a distinct relief organization endowed with the knowledge, experience and financial capability crucial for the effective dealing with such more frequent, diverse and massive consequences of climate changes.

Of course, there is a difference of opinion between the two on the underlying cause of climate change. Where Obama claims it is the natural result of mankind burning fossil fuels, bin Laden focused on the judgment of Allah toward mankind for unbelief.

In any event, both Obama and bin Laden have effectively said that the cause of climate change is mankind's sin, and that to confront the effects it will take a lot of religious zeal.

I don't know whether this is actual ignorance or a manifestation of progressive "remember no evil" selective amnesia, but the NY Times provides an odd history lesson in describing European efforts to curb the refugee flow from Libya to Europe:

How to stem the tide of migrants and accommodate those who make it to the European Union is among the thorniest challenges for the bloc. Even as strong anti-immigration sentiment in some countries has fueled demonstrations and gains for right-wing parties, there remains a deep reluctance in the European Union to use force in places like Libya, where NATO’s enforcement of a no-fly zone in 2011 helped to drive the country’s dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, from power.

A no-fly zone? Is that really all they remember? My goodness, here is the Times coverage from March 26 2011:

NATO had agreed late Thursday that it would take over not only command and control of the no-fly zone, but also the much riskier campaign to protect civilians through aggressive coalition airstrikes on Colonel Qaddafi’s troops on the ground, the officials said. Details of the second part of the operation will be worked out in a formal military planning document in time for a meeting of coalition foreign ministers in London on Tuesday, the officials said.

This is a two-part operation going well beyond "no-fly". Here is Obama describing it in a national address on March 28, 2011:

Our most effective alliance, NATO, has taken command of the enforcement of the arms embargo and the no-fly zone. Last night, NATO decided to take on the additional responsibility of protecting Libyan civilians. This transfer from the United States to NATO will take place on Wednesday. Going forward, the lead in enforcing the no-fly zone and protecting civilians on the ground will transition to our allies and partners, and I am fully confident that our coalition will keep the pressure on Qaddafi’s remaining forces.

So, a three part program - an arms embargo, a no-fly zone, and active attempts to attack Qadaffi's troops and equipment.

Since they evidently let their subscriptions to the Times elapse, let me offer the Times editors a reprise of their own archives: here is a Times editorial from April 14, roughly two weeks into the quagmire:

Stop the Blame Game

After more than two weeks under attack by NATO forces, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is still slaughtering his people and showing no sign that he plans to give up. NATO and coalition partners are pointing fingers of blame at each other for this frustrating state of affairs, but what they should be doing is creating a renewed sense of common purpose and direction.

...

American planes dominated the early phase of airstrikes, then turned over major responsibility to France, Britain and a non-American NATO command. Now with Colonel Qaddafi thwarting NATO by hiding heavy weapons in heavily populated neighborhoods, Paris and London are insisting that more countries are needed to attack ground targets, not just enforce the no-flight zone.

Hmm, back in the day the editors understood that the Libyan operation was more than a no-fly zone. Why the selective memory now?

At least they don't seem to mean January 2017. The Times includes this bit of hillarity:

...Mrs. Clinton promised the emails would be released quickly, but the delay proposed by the State Department would not necessarily provide a breather. The Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary would come just after the State Department’s target for releasing the emails.

Of course, if no serious alternatives have entered those races because they could not find any traction in 2015, even hideous revelations in the emails (the non-deleted emails, remember) won't boost the alternatives that don't exist.

And why so long?

The department is dividing the material into small batches, with plans to review about 1,000 emails a week. In addition to the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act office, subject-matter experts within the department will review the emails before their release, as will other government agencies when relevant, including the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council.

“Currently, this project is staffed full time by a project manager and two case analysts, as well as nine FOIA reviewers who devote the entirety of their time at the State Department to this effort, plus other analysts and information technology specialists who provide collateral assistance to this review in addition to their regular duties,” the filing stated. “The team managing this project has met daily since early April to implement and oversee this large undertaking.”

My psychic sources have alerted me that as part of its ongoing effort to hire the alternatively enabled, the State Department is having the emails read by three blind people, so a lot of translation into braille is necessary. And all team meetings are chaired by a deaf person, so there is a lot of sign language involved, some of which goes over the head of the blind people. Fortunately, many of the meeting participants speak English.

David Brooks enters the "What should we have done in 2003" fray with a thought-provoking piece on the challenges alternative history.

He indulges in a quick smackdown of Prof. Krugman, who insisted yesterday it was all about the Bush lies:

The first obvious lesson is that we should look at intelligence products with a more skeptical eye. There’s a fable going around now that the intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was all cooked by political pressure, that there was a big political conspiracy to lie us into war.

That doesn’t gibe with the facts. Anybody conversant with the Robb-Silberman report from 2005 knows that this was a case of human fallibility. This exhaustive, bipartisan commission found “a major intelligence failure”: “The failure was not merely that the Intelligence Community’s assessments were wrong. There were also serious shortcomings in the way these assessments were made and communicated to policy makers.”

Mr. Morell is gentle about most of the politicians he dealt with — he expresses admiration for both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama, though he accuses former Vice President Dick Cheney of deliberately implying a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq that the C.I.A. had concluded probably did not exist. But when it comes to the events leading up to the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq, he is critical of his own agency.

Mr. Morell concludes that the Bush White House did not have to twist intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged effort to rekindle the country’s work on weapons of mass destruction.

“The view that hard-liners in the Bush administration forced the intelligence community into its position on W.M.D. is just flat wrong,” he writes. “No one pushed. The analysts were already there and they had been there for years, long before Bush came to office.”

Mr. Brooks also tries to bring a bit of reason to the discussion, and closes with a scarcely veiled swipe at Obama:

After the 1990s, many of us were leaning in the interventionist direction. We’d seen the fall of the apartheid regime, which made South Africa better. We’d seen the fall of communist regimes, which made the Eastern bloc nations better. Many of us thought that, by taking down Saddam Hussein, we could end another evil empire, and gradually open up human development in Iraq and the Arab world.

Has that happened? In 2004, I would have said yes. In 2006, I would have said no. In 2015, I say yes and no, but mostly no.

...

If the victory in the Cold War taught us to lean forward and be interventionist, the legacy of the 2003 Iraq decision should cause us to pull back from the excesses of that mentality, to have less faith in America’s ability to understand other places and effect change.

These are all data points in a larger education — along with the surge and the recent withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. I wind up in a place with less interventionist instincts than where George W. Bush was in 2003, but significantly more interventionist instincts than where President Obama is inclined to be today.

Finally, Iraq teaches us to be suspicious of leaders who try to force revolutionary, transformational change. It teaches us to have respect for trimmers, leaders who pay minute attention to context, who try to lead gradual but constant change. It teaches us to honor those who respect the unfathomable complexity of history and who are humble in the face of consequences to their actions that they cannot fully predict or understand.

Hmm. "[R]espect for trimmers, leaders who pay minute attention to context" could actually be getting us ready for Hillarity! But I am not ready.

May 18, 2015

Rare is the day when I can endorse an Obama quote without reservation, but this bit of Eerie Prescience is irrefutable:

"But right now what we have is, I think by all accounts, a disaster unfolding in Iraq. We all have a responsibility, Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the White House, to make sure that we can come up with the best strategy. I don't think the president's strategy is going to work."

OK, he said that about Bush's proposed surge in January 2007 but I wouldn't change a word today.

Lest you wonder - yes, I am peeved that the media is all agog about what we might or might not have done differently with Iraq in 2003. Better questions include Rand Paul's ruminations about the wisdom of decapitating strongmen with no plan to replace them, as with both Bush with Saddam and Hillary with Libya; eventually we may even turn to the question of whether Obama's decision to cut and run from Iraq with no residual US presence contributed even the teensiest bit to the current chaos. Not even the Times could turn a blind eye to that; this is from their coverage of the ISIS ascendance a year ago:

Critics have long warned that America’s withdrawal of troops from Iraq, without leaving even a token force, invited an insurgent revival. The apparent role of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in Tuesday’s attack helps vindicate those, among them the former ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford, who have called for arming more moderate groups in the Syrian conflict.

Today it is Ramadi in the news:

Key Iraqi City Falls to ISIS as Last of Security Forces Flee

BAGHDAD — The last Iraqi security forces fled Ramadi on Sunday, as the city fell completely to the militants of the Islamic State, who ransacked the provincial military headquarters, seizing a large store of weapons, and killed people loyal to the government, according to security officials and tribal leaders.

The fall of Ramadi, despite intensified American airstrikes in recent weeks in a bid to save the city, represented the biggest victory so far this year for the Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate, or Islamic state, in the vast areas of Syria and Iraq that it controls. The defeat also laid bare the failed strategy of the Iraqi government, which had announced last month a new offensive to retake Anbar Province, a large desert region in the west of which Ramadi is the capital.

Hmm, the "failed strategy" of the Iraqi government? Much later we get this:

The deterioration of Anbar over the past month underscored the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi Army, which is being trained by American military advisers, and raised questions about the United States’ strategy to defeat the Islamic State. At the same time, now that the militias are being called upon, the collapse of Ramadi has demonstrated again the influence of Iran, even if its advisers are unlikely to be on the ground in Anbar, as they were during the operation in Tikrit.

Iran up and the US down.

We are also offered a half-history lesson:

Anbar Province holds painful historical import for the United States as the place where nearly 1,300 Marines and soldiers died after the American-led invasion of 2003.

Well, it also resonates as the home of the Anbar Awakening, the birthplace of the Bush surge which led to what Obama declared to be a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq" when he lauded the final troop withdrawals in preparation for his re-election campaign.

DEAD-ENDERS: Paul Krugman won't talk about anything post-2003. However, in the course of denouncing Bush's lies he recycles some misinformation from the left, including this chestnut:

Did prewar assessments vastly understate the difficulty and cost of occupation? That’s because the war party didn’t want to hear anything that might raise doubts about the rush to invade. Indeed, the Army’s chief of staff was effectively fired for questioning claims that the occupation phase would be cheap and easy.

The timeline was kicked around endlessly, particularly when John Kerry deployed it during his 2004 Vietnam Flashback campaign. Can we agree that the CNN fact-checkers don't normally tilt right?

CNN Fact Check: Kerry implies that former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki was forced to retire as a result of his comments about troop levels in Iraq, which is inaccurate. Shinseki served a full four-year term as army chief of staff and did not retire early. Since World War II, no army chief of staff has served longer than four years. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided in April 2002 who he would tap to succeed Shinseki, according to a Pentagon official, long before Shinseki's troop level comments in 2003. So by the time Shinseki made his comments on troop levels, it was already known that he would not remain in his post beyond his full four-year term.

And lest you doubt, here is the Times from April 2002, a year before the controversial testimony, covering Shinseki's replacement:

The senior defense official said Mr. Rumsfeld chose Gen. John Keane, the Army's second-ranking officer, to succeed the current Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, whose term will expire next year.

Whatever. I certainly understand Krugman's desire to rehash an argument in which history has substantially vindicated him, rather than tackling the messier problems of the present, such as, how do we regroup from the Obama disaster in the Middle East?

SINCE YOU ASK: I assume the media will eventually ask every person in America what we should have done in Iraq in 2003. My official editorial position is that Bush should have realized that Rumsfeld did not have a credible plan to win the peace and therefore ought to hold off on the war. That said, I think by the time Bush left office Iraq was eminently "winnable" and might well have remained stable, sovereign, and substantially self-reliant if US troops had remained as a counterweight to Iran and the Shiite militias.

I also wonder about the effect of a non-invasion of Iraq on our policy with Iran. Presumably, absent an invasion of Iraq we would have pressed for the ever-tighter sanctions that were so bitterly unpopular in the Arab world (reputedly killing 5,000 Iraqi babies per month) and so empowering of Saddam's police state.

Could we have persuaded the ayatollahs to give up their nuclear aspirations while Saddam remained as their neighbor? Could we have persuaded the world to engage in a second endless, unpopular humanitarian disaster with tougher sanctions on Iran?

Then again, even with Saddam out we aren't making headway with Iran, so who knows...

May 17, 2015

Recently I traveled with my family to Washington DC for my seventh grade son's field trip. Unbeknownst to the organizers, the field trip coincided with the 70th anniversary of VE Day.

A commenter here at JOM mentioned that there would be a flyover over DC on the anniversary, so the field trip was re-organized to take advantage of the opportunity to see it. So on Friday, May 8th the field trip took us to Arlington National Cemetery. We timed the visit so that we ended at the Iwo Jima Memorial just before the flyover began, with a wonderful vantage on the lawn just below the memorial.

The planes flew down the Potomac River and then turned as they approached the Washington Monument passing directly over the Mall. The flyover included over 50 aircraft from World War II and was organized with the planes flying in formations representing major battles and events in the war.

I'm not much of a photographer, but here is my favorite shot: a B-24 Liberator accompanied by three P-51 Mustangs, representing the Ploesti Raid:

For anyone interested, I've included all the photos and videos from our view of the flyover over at my blog TheVoiceinMyHead.

I want to make sure even on this post that I give credit to my son for identifying all of the planes and helping his poor old dad understand the context of the battles and events the flyover was commemorating. He's an incredibly intelligent and well-informed young man.

The entire flyover experience was amazing. Earlier in the week when we first visited the National Air and Space Museum, we had the privilege of watching a tour bus of Honor Flight attendees from Chicago unload and tour the museum.

Timeswoman and media critic Alessandra Stanley puts news anchor and philanthropist George Stephanopoulos on the couch to rationalize his donations to the Clinton Foundation and cover-up of same:

George Stephanopoulos and the Line Between News and Entertainment

First Brian Williams and now George Stephanopoulos. Credibility, or in this case, incredibility, is the Dutch elm disease of network anchors — once it spreads, it’s ferociously damaging and hard to stop.

For baffling reasons, Mr. Williams fibbed about his war zone derring-do. Mr. Stephanopoulos, a top strategist in Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign and administration before he joined ABC News, failed to let his viewers know that he had donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation. On “Good Morning America” on Friday, he called it a mistake. The admission has resulted in some Republicans claiming bias for Hillary Clinton.

"Some Republicans"? Do mainstream media critics, journalism professor and the like have an opinion on the ethics of this, or is this attack just more partisan hackery and we should all move on?

But on the psycho-babble:

The slip by Mr. Stephanopoulos is especially mystifying. He was the ultimate political caretaker-courtier and had to work particularly hard to mold a new persona for himself after leaving the Clinton White House. Like a religious convert, he was more invested in his journalistic bona fides than most because he acquired them so late in life.

He obviously wasn’t trying to curry favor with the Clintons — giving $75,000 over several years to charities in their foundation would be about as effective as trying to get a child into Harvard by giving $100 to the Radcliffe Institute.

Hmm - Ms. Stanley not only knows what Ms. Clinton is but she knows her price. Why is it obvious that as a show of devotion and respect $75,000 wouldn't be enough? Isn't it the thought that counts?

He couldn’t buy the Clintons’ forgiveness with that kind of money, but it is possible that he sought to assuage some of his own remorse over putting his credibility and fortune above their political ambitions. Mr. Stephanopoulos projects choir-boy decency and probity on camera, so he might have wanted to feel better about himself off the set. For someone of his wealth, $75,000 is a small price to pay.

Wow. So this was all a feel-good attempt by George with no thought or hope that it might change the attitude of the Clintons towards him. And he failed to disclose it because, hmm, who would even care?

If reporters, sorry, "reporters" are already straining this hard to cover for the Clintons it is going to be a long, painful campaign.

May 16, 2015

Saudi Arabia is so angry at the emerging nuclear agreement between Iran and the major powers that it is threatening to develop its own nuclear capability — one more indication of the deep differences between the United States and the Persian Gulf Arab states over the deal, which the major powers and Iran aim to complete by June 30. President Obama had hoped to bridge that gap with a show of American-Arab unity at this week’s summit meeting at Camp David. The summit meeting fell well short of his ambitions, an unfortunate outcome for both sides.

Yeah, there is plenty of disappointment to go around right now. The Times provides a rosy view of the background:

The Sunni Arabs have two main worries. One is that the nuclear agreement with Iran would leave Iran with a limited capability to produce nuclear fuel for energy and medical purposes, instead of ending it outright. They also worry that Iran’s re-entry into the international community after decades of isolation would mean that Washington’s loyalties would henceforth be divided and that America could no longer be counted on to defend them.

Mr. Obama tried to address that in the joint statement, which declared, “The United States policy to use all elements of power to secure our core interests in the Gulf region, and to deter and confront external aggression against our allies and partners, as we did in the Gulf War, is unequivocal.” But he stopped short, and wisely so, of offering a formal pact similar to the NATO treaty that some Arab leaders had wanted but that could drag the United States into Middle East conflicts.

Our commitment is unequivocal, but not quite so unequivocal that we think we could push a treaty through Congress. That had to help!

And the Times is far to forward-looking to mention a few points familiar to regular readers, not to mention every Arab leader - the President that is offering reassurance today is the same guy who declared "Assad must go" but didn't make it happen; that drew red lines in Syria and then pretended he hadn't; who declared that we were leaving a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq" when we weren't; who evaluated ISIS as "the junior varsity"; and who held out the US strategy with Yemen as a model of counter-insurgency, prior to their collapse. That record suggests that Team Obama is not exactly overrun with Middle Eastern savants.

They also allude to a question bothering me - does Iran even need to go nuclear?

Nevertheless, it is perverse for Arab leaders who once considered Iran’s nuclear program their gravest threat to complain about a deal intended to diminish that threat. A more rational fear is that when sanctions are lifted, Iran, which is causing trouble in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, will have more resources with which to expand its influence.

Well, just because the deal is "intended" to diminish the nuclear threat doesn't mean it has a realistic chance of achieving its intentions. But yes, I think the Saudis need nukes more than Iran does.

In a 'news analysis' the NY Times declares Putin the winner of his year-long scuffle with Team Obama over the crimea, the Ukraine, and the world:

A Diplomatic Victory, and Affirmation, for Putin

MOSCOW — For Russia, victory came three days after Victory Day, in the form of Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit this week to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. It was widely interpreted here as a signal of surrender by the Americans — an olive branch from President Obama, and an acknowledgment that Russia and its leader are simply too important to ignore.

Since the seizure of Crimea more than a year ago, Mr. Obama has worked aggressively to isolate Russia and its renegade president, Vladimir V. Putin, portraying him as a lawless bully atop an economically failing, increasingly irrelevant petrostate.

Mr. Obama led the charge by the West to punish Mr. Putin for his intervention in Ukraine, booting Russia from the Group of 8 economic powers, imposing harsh sanctions on some of Mr. Putin’s closest confidants and delivering financial and military assistance to the new Ukrainian government.

In recent months, however, Russia has not only weathered those attacks and levied painful countersanctions on America’s European allies, but has also proved stubbornly important on the world stage. That has been true especially in regard to Syria, where its proposal to confiscate chemical weapons has kept President Bashar al-Assad, a Kremlin ally, in power, and in the negotiations that secured a tentative deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

...

“Putin is looking pretty smart right now,” said Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute, a Washington research group focused on Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Putin is looking pretty smart and we are looking pretty stupid. And who could have seen this coming? Was it more than a year ago that the Times was explaining, to modest derision, that Obama had a plan for isolating Putin while continuing to garner his cooperation on Syria and Iran? Ron Fournier of the National Journal used the phrase "a fundamental failure of leadership" in describing Obama's approach. And that was being charitable.

May 15, 2015

This is a throwaway post in the sense that it only contains inside baseball. But I'm putting it up as context for what I am now doing.

I began reading JustOneMinute at some point in 2005. Like half the internet, I came to JOM because Tom Maguire was The Man when it came to covering the Libby-Plame kerfuffle. Over time I began wading into the comments as a lurker because people like Clarice Feldman (and too many others to name, lest I leave some out) were putting up nuggets of information that were invaluable if one wanted to keep up with what was going down.

In the fall of 2006 I decided to dip my toes into commenting myself. Here was my first comment:

A New Direction for America as the dems chosen slogan?

Say that again and see if you can hear it.

Or, move the "d" from direction over to new and then read it out loud again.

A NewD irection for America

And you think it's coincidence that Bill has been popping up in the news recently?

I chose the name "hit and run" with the intention of being just that as a commenter - someone who would chirp from time to time to make a joke or play the fool, but mostly just sit back and watch as others were sifting though the meaty stuff of the Libby-Plame thing.

AND THEN THESE PEOPLE MADE ME LOVE THEM.

JOM is more addictive than any substance known to man. So now I've been here for just about a decade and have made some of the best friendships with some of the best people on the planet. While there are certainly others JOMers who have met more other JOMers than I have - I am proud to say I have now met 24 JOMers and additionally 15 JOMer family members from spouses to kids to grandkids.

Anyway, having now edited 10,000 more words out of what I was going to say (go ahead, you can thank me for that), let me cut to the chase. I am changing my JOM name due to the fact that Tom has allowed me to put up front page posts (background here). I love my name "hit and run" as a commenter. I hate seeing it on front page posts.

In 2008 I started my own blog to avoid being too verbose with my schtick in the JOM comments. TheVoiceInMyHead is now largely dormant - though I imagine I will pick back up once the 2016 election gets going. When I started that blog, I made the decision to blog under my real name.

In order for me to continue as a guest-blogger here with front page privileges (and let's be honest, if Tom comes back full-time and wants me to scram, I'll be happier than anyone to oblige), I would much prefer to do so under my real name.

So, no more "hit and run" for me. Or, I suppose, you.

ONE REASON FOR WRITING THIS POST: Making this change will change all the posts I have put up so far - and will change every comment I have made while logged in to Typepad. So by the time you read this (and if you are still reading at this point in this post, you deserve a medal and a psychiatric exam) "hit and run" will already be gone.

May 14, 2015

After covering some of Obama's comments from the poverty summit at Georgetown University this week, we're headed back (because why not, that's why).

The event was formally billed by the White House as a "Conversation on Poverty at Georgetown University". But don't be fooled, the conversation was about poverty across the US, not just at Georgetown. It was the conversation itself that was at Georgetown.

Georgetown, being a prominent Catholic university, provided the forum for the conversation to turn to the role religion and religious organizations play in helping alleviate poverty and raising awareness about it.

Using the White House transcript from the event, let's press forward. Obama magnanimously starts off just fine in describing evangelical and faith-based and Catholic organizations regarding their approach to addressing poverty:

There is great caring and great concern

Now let's pause right here and play a game. Let's call it: Guess the Next Word. Do you need a hint? Okay, it's three letters. Need another hint? Okay, lately in the media and on the left (and even on some of the right), this word is prominently used directly after "I believe in the First Amendment..."

Surely you have it by now.

There is great caring and great concern, but when it comes to what are you really going to the mat for, what’s the defining issue, when you're talking in your congregations, what’s the thing that is really going to capture the essence of who we are as Christians, or as Catholics, or what have you...

As far as we can tell, Obama's experience in the Christian church consists of attending Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church in Chicago (and claiming he didn't listen to much of what was said), and then avoiding church altogether once he became president except for a very few occasions on holidays such as Easter or Christmas. And not much else.

So listen as Obama describes what really goes on in these organizations:

...that this is oftentimes viewed as a “nice to have” relative to an issue like abortion.

And just a few sentences earlier Obama brought up, "disagreements around reproductive issues, or same-sex marriage, or what have you". The "this" in the quote above refers essentially to helping the poor. In the world of Obama, helping the poor is viewed as optional by churches.

At this point, and remember that these are extemporaneous comments at a discussion panel, not a prepared speech, Obama seems to realize that he might have stepped in it just a bit:

That's not across the board, but there sometimes has been that view, and certainly that's how it’s perceived in our political circles.

Oh. So maybe churches aren't really all Westboro Baptist - it's just that people see them that way?

Gee, I wonder how in the world that perception could possibly take hold when the man who has the biggest bully pulpit in the world tells the world that the pulpits in America are manned by bullies who would rather "go to the mat" on abortion and gay hate than helping the poor, which is really just a "nice to have"?

I mean, it's a mystery.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has long been at least as interested in whether church buildings are LEED certified as it is in whether churches are helping the poor:

As a former director of Bush’s faith-based office, Jim Towey, notes: “I can see that there’s a spiritual imperative to take good care of the earth . . . but it’s a tradeoff. If you’re going to direct [congregations’] attention toward that, it comes at the expense of the poor. Who’s advocating for them?”

ON SAUSAGES AND STRAWMEN: While many attribute the quote about sausage being made to Otto Van Bismarck, the original appears to have been coined by John Godfrey Saxe: "Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made."

May 13, 2015

Not to say that the vaunted Clinton Machine was behind the collapse of Obama's trade bill in the Senate - Obama's grating, snarky ineptitude surely played a large role - but Hillary can now duck the trade issue for months while maintaining an utterly mainstream Democratic wait-and-see attitude. One less political nettle for Hillary to grasp, at least for a while.

May 12, 2015

Obama was at a summit on poverty at Georgetown University today. The Weekly Standard covers his remarks:

"There’s always been a strain in American politics where you’ve got the middle class and the question’s been, ‘Who are you mad at?’ if you’re struggling," said Obama. "And over the last 40 years, sadly, I think there’s been an effort to either make folks mad at folks at the top or be mad at folks at the bottom. And I think the effort to suggest the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction."

Of course, this is Obama, so the blame falls firmly on . . . Fox News. Or at least the imaginary liberal straw man known as Faux News. Back in 2008, Obama had different target of blame in mind when assessing why middle class workers were mad if they were struggling:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Funny how the blame has shifted away from government six years into Obama being The Man. Yeah, funny. And convenient. Mostly convenient.

Obama also decided the one-percent needed some comeuppance, too:

"Part of what’s happened is that elites in a very mobile, globalized world are able to live together, away from folks who are not as wealthy," he said. "And so they feel less of a commitment to making those investments."

Interestingly enough, as a result of his "bitter clinger" remarks in 2008, opponents - including both Hillary and John McCain - began labeling Obama as elitist. 2008 Obama scoffed at such a notion. I wonder if 2015 Obama would judge his million dollar plus home in Hyde Park at the time as a marker of 2008 Obama being elitist?

Or looking ahead, I wonder if 2017 Obama will be living close to folks who are not as wealthy? Ok, you got me - I don't really wonder that. Nobody wonders that.

And of course in the here and now Obama, the father of two daughters at the very elite and very private Sidwell Friends School, used the speech to decry the trend of the wealthy to send kids to . . . private schools.

The plank in this man's eyes.

In other news, the White House is in the process of adding an additional row of spikes on the fence surrounding the property primarily to help Obama "live away from folks who are not as wealthy". And maybe a little bit as a measure of security to protect the leader (from behind) of the free world since the fence was breached last September.

And Mrs. Clinton, stuck between the progressives she must woo in a Democratic nomination fight and the president under whom she served, has remained, for the most part, mum.

The issue has become the first major policy test in her fledgling campaign, with Mrs. Clinton under mounting pressure to pick a side in the delicate and heated debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, a 12-nation trade agreement that Mr. Obama has aggressively pursued and that is facing a critical vote in Congress on Tuesday.

This game - Hillary obscuring her views and the press pretendingto care - will be played until Elizabeth Warren is truly and definitively out of the race and the last progressive candle has been extinguished. It's about leadership!

SINCE YOU ASKED: The Times alludes to her one press question on the TPP. Here we go, from the National Journal:

Question 4: An MSNBC reporter asked Clinton on April 21 whether she had concerns about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement the Obama administration is in the process of negotiating.Clinton: According to CBS: "Any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security. We have to do our part in making sure we have the capabilities and the skills to be competitive. ... It's got to be really a partnership between our business, our government, our workforce, the intellectual property that comes out of our universities, and we have to get back to a much more focused effort in my opinion to try to produce those capacities here at home so that we can be competitive in a global economy."

She favor good deals and opposes bad ones, and who amongst us can say differently?

From the New York Times, we learn that the Barack Obama Foundation has decided that Chicago is worthy of being the home of Obama's Presidential Library:

In an announcement posted early in the morning, the Barack Obama Foundation said the presidential library would be built in a park here, and not in New York or Hawaii, which were also considered. But the cheery message did not say which of two sprawling Chicago parks would be home to the library, nor did it mention a possible legal challenge to the project.

“All the strands of my life came together, and I really became a man, when I moved to Chicago,” Mr. Obama said in a videotaped announcement posted on YouTube. “That’s where I was able to apply that early idealism to try to work in communities in public service.”

Honestly, no one really believed the library was going anywhere but Chicago. It's not like this was Obama vying for the Olympics or something.

The location of the library will be in one of two parks in the city, perhaps due to concerns of remaining asbestos in Altgeld Gardens:

Being selected to host the library was a point of pride for many in Chicago, the city that nurtured Mr. Obama’s ascent from young community activist to state legislator and then United States senator. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s first White House chief of staff, made the project a priority, and the City Council voted unanimously to allow it to be built in Washington Park or Jackson Park.

However, there may be some legal challenges ahead, as building in city parks is frowned upon by some:

Building on parkland is a legally murky issue in Chicago, but state legislators passed a law this year intended to ease legal concerns. Friends of the Parks, a Chicago group that opposes private development on parkland, has filed a lawsuit seeking to block a narrative arts museum from being built along the lakefront. Though the group had publicly urged Mr. Obama to select a Chicago site that is not a park, officials there were not available to comment on Monday on whether they would ask the courts to block construction.

They passed a law? How quaint. This is Obama. Surely Rahm could have just issued an executive order.

But do give the Times credit for this: at least they don't use the word "professor" in describing Obama's stint at the University of Chicago:

The Obama Foundation said it would collaborate with the other finalists, and mentioned plans “to maintain a presence at Columbia” and work with the state of Hawaii “to establish a lasting presence in Honolulu.”

Unfortunately, we will all be living with some form of "a lasting presence" from Obama after he leaves office. Worse still, we will all be living with the lasting repercussions from the disaster of his two terms in office for generations to come.

MEMORY LANE: Back in 2008, Obama was that fresh-faced Senator who had never done much of anything other than run campaigns. At the time, I imagined what his Presidential Library would look like.

May 11, 2015

The Times recaps the medical studies indicting that coffee is probably good for you.

More Consensus on Coffee’s Benefits Than You Might Think

...

Coffee has long had a reputation as being unhealthy. But in almost every single respect that reputation is backward. The potential health benefits are surprisingly large.

When I set out to look at the research on coffee and health, I thought I’d see it being associated with some good outcomes and some bad ones, mirroring the contradictory reports you can often find in the news media. This didn’t turn out to be the case.

Just last year, a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies looking at long-term consumption of coffee and the risk of cardiovascular disease was published. The researchers found 36 studies involving more than 1,270,000 participants. The combined data showed that those who consumed a moderate amount of coffee, about three to five cups a day, were at the lowest risk for problems. Those who consumed five or more cups a day had no higher risk than those who consumed none.

...

Back to the studies. Years earlier, a meta-analysis was published looking at how coffee consumption might be associated with stroke. Eleven studies were found, including almost 480,000 participants. As with the prior studies, consumption of two to six cups of coffee a day was associated with a lower risk of disease, compared with those who drank none. Another meta-analysis published a year later confirmed these findings.

Rounding out concerns about the effect of coffee on your heart, another meta-analysis examined how drinking coffee might be associated with heart failure. Again, moderate consumption was associated with a lower risk, with the lowest risk among those who consumed four servings a day. Consumption had to get up to about 10 cups a day before any bad associations were seen.

...

A study looking at all cancers suggested that it might be associated with reduced overall cancer incidence and that the more you drank, the more protection was seen.

That said, the author implores us to drink the coffee black, not burdening it with dairy and sugar. I am in agreement on the sugar, but not the dairy.

May 07, 2015

It is highly probable that Assad of Syria has crossed Obama's red line yet again and is using chemical weapons to terrorize his own restive population. However, it is merely boring chlorine (toxic but hardly exotic) and neither the UN nor the US is poised to respond, so the world community is giving this a 'whatever'.

And with this sort of ability to keep a straight face while presenting an alternative vision of reality, Brady would be an excellent pick for "Vice President in Charge of Making Shit Up". After all these years decades of prevarication Hillary must be ready to hand off to fresh legs. Let's go!

Researchers have uncovered a unique connection between diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, providing further evidence that a disease that robs people of their memories may be affected by elevated blood sugar, according to scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

One not-too-distant day sugar will be taxed and regulated like cigarettes.

May 04, 2015

The NY Times headlines a topical pro-Hillary revelation in a new book by a former CIA official and buries a pro-Bush tidbit.

First, getting us ready for Hillary:

Ex-C.I.A. Official Rebuts Republican Claims on Benghazi Attack in ‘The Great War of Our Time’

By David Sanger

WASHINGTON — The former deputy director of the C.I.A. asserts in a forthcoming book that Republicans, in their eagerness to politicize the killing of the American ambassador to Libya, repeatedly distorted the agency’s analysis of events. But he also argues that the C.I.A. should get out of the business of providing “talking points” for administration officials in national security events that quickly become partisan, as happened after the Benghazi attack in 2012.

The official, Michael J. Morell, dismisses the allegation that the United States military and C.I.A. officers “were ordered to stand down and not come to the rescue of their comrades,” and he says there is “no evidence” to support the charge that “there was a conspiracy between C.I.A. and the White House to spin the Benghazi story in a way that would protect the political interests of the president and Secretary Clinton,” referring to the secretary of state at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But he also concludes that the White House itself embellished some of the talking points provided by the Central Intelligence Agency and had blocked him from sending an internal study of agency conclusions to Congress.

Yeah, whatever - IMHO the Republicans should move past Benghazi and focus on the broader question of Hillary's role in the bizarre "plan" to topple Qadaffi with no credible plan to replace him.

And speaking of what might be thought of as a lesson of Iraq (Wasn't winning the war with no plan to win the peace Bush's mistake?) the Times has this Iraq flashback:

Mr. Morell is gentle about most of the politicians he dealt with — he expresses admiration for both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama, though he accuses former Vice President Dick Cheney of deliberately implying a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq that the C.I.A. had concluded probably did not exist. But when it comes to the events leading up to the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq, he is critical of his own agency.

Mr. Morell concludes that the Bush White House did not have to twist intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged effort to rekindle the country’s work on weapons of mass destruction.

“The view that hard-liners in the Bush administration forced the intelligence community into its position on W.M.D. is just flat wrong,” he writes. “No one pushed. The analysts were already there and they had been there for years, long before Bush came to office.”

May 02, 2015

The prosecutor in the Freddie Gray death announces what might be hasty, politically motivated charges and a city calms down. For now, at least:

Baltimore’s Mood Shifts From Grim to Elated After Charges Are Announced

...

“It seems like we’re finally getting justice,” said Gary Thornton, 29, who lives in East Baltimore.

Tashira Skinner, his friend, interjected, “It won’t be justice until they say guilty.”

There is that pesky matter of trials and convictions. The Times follows up on the challenges facing the prosecutor:

Baltimore Prosecutor Faces National History of Police Acquittals

With an unexpectedly speedy and sweeping announcement on Friday of homicide and abuse-of-power charges against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray, Baltimore’s chief prosecutor sent an unmistakable signal that the days when police misconduct drew a wrist slap are over.

It was a bold gesture, experts say — and a risky one. For the pledge may be an empty gesture unless prosecutors secure convictions in Mr. Gray’s death.

They say "empty gesture", I say "over-reaching, pandering disaster"; time will tell. At some point actual evidence and facts may be important, but I would guess that acquittals would inflame the city and (further) de-legitimize the criminal justice system in the eyes of many.

Both history and the circumstances of the case unveiled on Friday hint that it will be anything but easy. Brutality cases against police officers are notoriously difficult to win, and much about the case, including the evidence against the officers and their defense, remains unknown.

I don't know much about the evidence either, but if the police officers really did find Freddie Gray unconscious and unresponsive in the back of the van without seeking immediate medical intervention, then a "reckless disregard" type charge seems supportable. This is from the NY Times timeline - Stop 4 was the last stop before the van went to the Western District police station:

Stop No. 4: [Prosecutor] Ms. Mosby said Officer Goodson was met here by Officers Nero, Miller and Porter. Sgt. Alicia D. White and Officers Porter and Goodson observed “Mr. Gray unresponsive on the floor,” Ms. Mosby said. Sergeant White spoke to the back of Mr. Gray’s head, and he did not respond. “Despite Mr. Gray’s seriously deteriorating medical condition, no medical assistance was rendered or summoned for Mr. Gray at that time by any officer,” Ms. Mosby said.

That said, the idea of "false imprisonment" charges based on the absence of a legitimate basis for arrest seems like a stretch. My presumption is that there is (or ought to be) some sort of a good faith exception. A key part of the dispute here seems to be whether Mr. Gray's knife was legal or not. Presumably the defense will argue that either (a) the knife was in fact illegal (or a parole violation?), or (b) the knife was close enough to illegal that the officers made a good faith mistake. Attorney Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection has lots more:

Arrests often go uncharged, and charges are often dismissed, and defendants are even acquitted at trial, often based upon a later conclusion that the underlying facts which suggested a crime are untrue or mistaken. None of these outcomes makes the initial arrest illegal.

When an officer makes an arrest based on an articulable statement of probable cause, that arrest becomes illegal only if the officer knew or reasonably should have known that no crime had, in fact, been committed.

In short, police are entitled to make reasonable mistakes, and such a reasonable mistake does not make the arrest illegal.

Such a mistake may, of course, make further prosecution of the offense impractical or outright unjust. But that’s a completely different matter than whether an arrest was unlawful.

One important lesson has been learned here - let's cut back to the initial Times coverage describing the charges:

Standing on a nearby street corner, Renee James, 48, said, “There’s no need to go tear up the city no more.”

Her friend Antoinnette White, 53, said of the riot: “Hurting innocent people was nonsense. I cried.”

But Abdullah Moaney, 53, an information technology worker from East Baltimore, said that “peace has lost its credibility.” Seeking to justify the violence that broke out Monday, he said that “if it wasn’t for the riot,” charges would not have been filed.

Muslims have figured it out, and now some Americans are figuring it out - non-violence is for patsies, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

If the Iranians think they can bully Obama by being aggressive not only at the negotiating table, but out in open waters seizing cargo ships, well, they've got another thing coming.

Make more demands in negotiations? Obama will cave. Seize a ship? Obama will back down. Here another thing, there another thing, next thing you know, the Iranians will have coming to them everything they could ever want.

Or will Obama back down on the Iranians aggressiveness at sea?

The New York Times - not normally my beat - informs us that the US Navy will be stepping up its presence in the Strait of Hormuz, following the seizure of a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship by Iran earlier in the week:

WASHINGTON — The Navy on Thursday began deploying warships to protect American commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz against any interference from Iran, which this week seized a cargo ship in the narrow waterway, though which about 20 percent of the world’s oil passes.

The presence of the naval ships is intended as deterrence:

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter approved the new policy on Thursday, said the officials, who cast it as a show of force intended to discourage Iran from making any aggressive moves against American shipping in the strait. At least one American ship has passed through the strait under the eye of the Navy, they said.

Of course, mere presence alone is only a deterrent if those who would be deterred think there exists a credible threat of the use of force. Do the Iranians believe Obama has the stomach - or some other piece of anatomy, for that matter - to forcefully respond to their aggressiveness, if doing so might scuttle the deal Obama has been trying to forge with Iran over its nuclear program?

All those concessions Obama has been making down the drain? There could be a Peace Prize at stake for goodness sake. There's a legacy-making precipice Obama is determined to go over.

A couple more aggressive threats from the Iranians, and they may end up with nukes and the state of Alaska.

On three levels, this incident mocked America before the eyes of the world. First, a bedrock principle of global order was breached with no response from America or the global community. [...]

Since World War II, the American Navy has been the guarantor of freedom of the seas for all nations and commerce. The U.S. Navy prides itself upon its annual forays into disputed waters to demonstrate that seizing ships like the Tigris means engaging American warships. But neither the White House nor the Navy declared that Tuesday’s seizure violated that basic norm. [...]

Second, it demonstrated that the Obama White House knew it was going to be backed down in the Gulf sooner or later. A succession of senior U.S. military commanders have asked for rules of engagement to prevent this very type of piracy, and been refused by the White House. [...]

Third, the seizure illustrated that Mr. Obama is determined to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, regardless of what actions Iran takes.

Let's flashback to the good ol' days of 2012, when there was still some hope that there would be no Obama second term. Ah to be young and naive again.

ROMNEY: Our Navy is old -- excuse me, our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We're now at under 285. We're headed down to the low 200s if we go through a sequestration. That's unacceptable to me.

I want to make sure that we have the ships that are required by our Navy. Our Air Force is older and smaller than at any time since it was founded in 1947.

We've changed for the first time since FDR -- since FDR we had the -- we've always had the strategy of saying we could fight in two conflicts at once. Now we're changing to one conflict. Look, this, in my view, is the highest responsibility of the President of the United States, which is to maintain the safety of the American people.

Now, Obama really wanted you to understand that he's not anti-military, not against the US maintaining its superpower status through the might of the US military. No, just like Smart Diplomacy, Obama is for Smart Power. To demonstrate his seriousness in the matter, Obama deployed . . . a joke:

OBAMA: The budget that we are talking about is not reducing our military spending. It is maintaining it.

But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn't spent enough time looking at how our military works.

You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we're counting ships.

Let's give Obama partial credit here. He's right it's not just about counting ships. You could give Obama three times the ships the Navy has now and his leading from behind would still be feckless, and the Iranians would still not be shaking in their boots. Or sandals. Or whatever.

My kingdom for a horse President who values the security of his country.

May 01, 2015

It's kind of poignant that Obama is still pretending that "community organizing" is a real job. Of course, Obama is also pretending that he won't be heading a billion dollar foundation and collecting huge speaking fees to talk about his past (and future!) greatness.